Entries in Ernie Els
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — On a rainy Tuesday in the Piedmont, two days before the last big golf tournament of the year, there was nothing finer in Carolina than to hear Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els talk about reaching the century mark — and Rory McIlroy talk about Phil and Ernie, along with some comments of his own game.

When the 99th PGA Championship begins Thursday at Quail Hollow Country Club, Mickelson and Els each will be playing in his 100th major championship, a total achieved by only 12 others and topped by the 164 of the great Jack Nicklaus.

Thirteen years and a hemisphere apart, Ernie Els again is in the semifinals of the Accenture WGC World Match Play Championship after a victory over a kid not half his age.

Els, 44, took advantage of his experience and the ineffectiveness of 20-year-old Jordan Spieth for a 4-and-2 victory Saturday in their quarterfinal at the Golf Club at Dove Mountain in the foothills north of Tucson.

LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England — The word was everywhere, making a bad situation worse, as if what happened to Adam Scott the final day of the British Open, the final holes of the British Open, could be worse.

Scott not only lost the Open, blew the Open, came in second to Ernie Els, but was being branded a “choke,’’ and there’s nothing more demeaning in sports, nothing more damaging.